Currently it is possible to analyze items of luggage completely for explosives. The underlying analysis methods prove very reliable but also laborious. Such a laborious analysis can take place in airports only in so-called third-stage apparatuses. There, the quantity of items of luggage processed is much smaller than with the first- and second-stage apparatuses. With these third-stage apparatuses a high detection rate and a low false alarm rate is required. In order to be able to use such a third-stage apparatus as a second-stage apparatus also, the analysis time must be clearly reduced.
This problem has been solved to date by allowing no physical separation between a first-stage and a second-stage apparatus (see U.S. Pat. No. 5,182,764) or preventing a physical movement or rotation of the item of luggage (see WO 03/065077 A2). However this is very costly and hardly feasible in practice.